Winston Churchill

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

When you’re first figuring yourself out, you care so much about what people think of you.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Be an opener of doors.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.